Chonnam National University took 10th place in Korea in terms of cited research journals, widely used to measure the qualitative level of scientific research. The data featured in Thomson
s ISI Essential Science Indicators include most-cited author rankings, institutional (university, corporate, government research lab) rankings, national rankings, and journal rankings. According to the database based on the analysis of the most recent ten years of data from January 1, 1993 through August 30, 2003, Among research institutions in Korea CNU ranked 10th with 10,879 cited papers. ISI Essential Science Indicators Web product is a resource that enables researchers to conduct ongoing, quantitative analyses of research performance and track trends in science. Covering a multidisciplinary selection of 8,500 journals from around the world, this in-depth analytical tool offers data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries, and journals. Since citation rates vary by field and older papers are cited more than recent papers, the selection procedure for highly cited papers takes these factors into account. The first step is to count the number of papers cited at different levels of citation and construct distributions for each field and year. These distributions for each field/year are then used to set selection thresholds by taking the same fraction of papers. Seoul National University ranked 1st among research institutions in Korea with a total of 89,550 cited papers, followed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) which was 2nd with 56,543 research papers. Yonsei University took 3rd place with 30,264 cited papers and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) was 4th with 25,559. Korea University ranked next with 23,121 papers. Thomson ISI said, \"Three local universities - Kyungpook National University, Pusan National University, and Chonnam National University - were included in top 10 in Korea. Their research achievements are especially noteworthy.\" Meanwhile, Harvard University ranked the first with a total 2,119,500 cited papers, followed by the University of Texas, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and the University of Washington in order. ISI Essential Science Indicators counts are based on an ISI journal set categorized into 22 broad fields, categorizing papers into 2 fields of social sciences (social sciences and economics & business), 8 fields of natural sciences (physics, material sciences, and the others), 2 fields of engineering, 6 fields of medical sciences, and five other fields such as mathematics and environment.